And so.
He pushed open the master bedroom door.
Moonlight spilled through the floor-to-ceiling windows onto the floor.
Haimo did not put Sasamori Aya on the bed large enough to accommodate several people. Instead, he casually set her down on the shag rug in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows.
His movements were not gentle.
They even carried a deliberate roughness.
But Sasamori Aya did not react at all. She was too tired; that overexertion had left her depleted at the level of her soul.
Haimo looked down at Sasamori Aya.
In the moonlight.
Sasamori Aya's bare upper body was covered in red marks, bruises left by her clashes with Haimo just now. They looked shocking against her jade-white body.
"As the price."
"I'm going to punish you."
Haimo slowly crouched down.
Another drop of Divine Blood gathered at his fingertip.
"Since you want to become stronger so badly."
"Since you were willing to leave yourself this battered for those so-called numbers."
"Then I'll..."
"Deprive you of the right to enjoy the process."
"And turn the ritual you've been looking forward to most into a one-sided notification."
For adventurers.
[Leveling up] was sacred.
It was a leap to a higher level of existence, a great step bringing mortals closer to the gods.
Such moments often called for bathing and changing clothes, for listening to their god's proclamation in person, filled with apprehension and excitement under their god's witness.
It was a sense of ceremony.
But now.
Haimo decided to strip away that sense of ceremony.
"Drip."
That rich drop of Divine Blood fell onto the very center of the Holy Script on Sasamori Aya's back.
Red light.
An unprecedented red light erupted in the room, even eclipsing the moonlight outside the windows.
The Holy Script, which had already reached the